In her 1986 essay “Waking Up in the Middle of Some American Dreams,” poet June Jordan calls for a multiplicity of American dreams rather than a singular paradigm. For Jordan, those in pursuit of these dreams include:
the white people the black people the female people the lonely people the terrorized people the elderly people the young people the visionary people the unemployed people the regular ordinary omnipresent people who crave grace and variety and surprise and safety and one new day after another.
On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, this presentation of works from The Fabric Workshop and Museum’s collection explores the complexity of American-ness through lenses of history, memory, and mythology. Made by past Artists-in-Residence in collaboration with the FWM Studio, the projects reimagine symbols of nationhood and belonging, critique ongoing legacies of inequity, and offer expansive visions of kinship and community.
Some American Dreams features 27 works by 20 artists employing a range of media—including furniture, sculpture, textiles and clothing, video, and photography—and representing four decades of making at FWM. The works meditate on themes of indigeneity and race, alternative origin stories, landscape and the environment, the national figure as icon, and images of cultural affiliation. Renditions of prominent historical figures—such as Frederick Douglass, George and Martha Washington, Harriet Jacobs, and Muhammad Ali—are interspersed with reworkings of patriotic symbols. Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds’s abstract scarves render Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations’ reservation lands as vibrant patchworks of color. Across the gallery, Becky Howland’s maximalist table setting condemns environmental exploitation through depictions of toxic waste and poisoned waterways. In works by the Rev. Howard Finster, Rose B. Simpson, and Luis Jiménez, the mythological dimensions of the Americas emerge as printed visitations from angels and aliens, a ceramic earth mother goddess, and volcanic deities on low-rider car seats. Through recognizable hairstyles, a graffiti tag, and a cherished local musical act launched to stardom, other works by Alison Saar, Mario Ybarra, Jr., and Yinka Shonibare CBE RA consider visual markers of communal identity.
The artists represented in this exhibition break down borders and categorical distinctions to propose a polyphony of American dreams shaped by hybridity, friction, and affinity. They ask: what if “America” is not one project, but many? And how might these Americas be affirmed, resisted, or remade, in Jordan’s words, to envision “one new day after another?”
